Ryan gestures to The Hotel. “He took the money she made and bought this place. Feminists always think her ghost is pissed because she had to stop acting, and then he got rich and famous. But”—he looks around, like The Hotel itself is evidence of what he’s about to say—“she lived in style. I don’t think she gave a shit about a career.”

“Why are you rebuilding it, then? If it has all this weird history. Why not demolish it, or sell it off or something? The land’s gotta be worth—”

“That’s what my dad wanted,” Ryan says. “And he would have, but I chose it for my project.”

“Project?”

“Riggs family tradition,” Ryan explains. He picks up the camera again and starts scrolling through the photos he’s taken, like he’s bored by his own story. “When we turn eighteen we get a little bit of our trust on the condition that we don’t spend it on ourselves. It has to go toward making something. For a while that was improving land, mostly, but recently there have been a lot of nightclub and restaurant investments. You can imagine.”

“Oh.”

“That’s how Roman started Flash—that was his. They want us to learn how our money can work for us,” Ryan says. “And how fast it can disappear. Avery—my great-great-grandfather, the guy who built this place—his dad spent a literal fortune gambling. He wanted to make sure we wouldn’t be that dumb.”

Cass’s car appears at the mouth of the driveway.

“So you chose this place?” Lulu asks. “Even though it’s maybe-cursed?”

Ryan smiles. This is the face Lulu knows best on him: certain, and pleased with himself about it. “Yeah,” he says.

“You believe you can—what, break it?”

Cass parks and gets out of her car.

Ryan says, “I’m not scared of it. I figure, fuck a curse, you know?”

He’s all princely arrogance and rich-boy bluster. Ryan is so used to the idea that the rules don’t apply to him that even a supernatural one doesn’t faze him. Of course he doesn’t believe in curses. He probably doesn’t even believe in luck. Ryan has a thousand-dollar cell phone in his pocket and a brand-new car in the driveway. He’s been given money that could feed a family for years and told to use it to teach himself some lessons. So what if it is all a waste? He’ll still have the idle afternoons he spent here, king of his castle, high on a hill.

He’ll have the pictures too, Lulu thinks. Whatever he says about hot girls and easy subjects, he has them if he wants them. Which means he has the power to make the world think his life is beautiful and enviable and interesting even when all he’s doing is wasting it away.